There is a difference in hamburgers: Ground chuck, round and sirloin burgers are made of meat taken from a specific body part. Ground beef can be all the leftovers ground up, so long as it does not contain more than 27% fat.

When their ground beef contained too much fat, burger makers called on Beef Products of South Dakota, which used heat and centrifuges to spin the fat off meat scraps, leaving only a lean, finely textured beef product (LFTB), that when treated with antibacterial agents, was good to go.

By adding the LFBT to their ground beef, those who sold cheap burgers were able to sell more burgers for less cost. And they did… 70% of the ground beef in the U.S., was believed to contain lean, finely textured beef… And all was well, until…

2012, when ABC News broadcast an 11-segment feature in which the news organization essentially repositioned the lean finely texture beef product into… pink slime. Consequent to the ABC News report, Beef Products business collapsed… hundreds of millions of dollars were lost, jobs were eradicated in three states… and the company went belly up.

So Beef Products brought a defamation suit against the Disney-owned ABC News for $1.9 billion, which could have been raised to about six billion by virtue of South Dakota defamation laws.

After three months of fighting it out in court, ABC News capitulated and agreed to an out of court settlement for no-one-is-saying how much!